A young girl holds her birthday cupcake during a celebration at the Salvation Army Center Of Hope in Charlotte.

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"He didn't even know how to blow a candle out. The child had to be told what to do after the singing ended, and once he did, he turned around and said, 'Can I do it again?' " says Amy Cervantes, co-founder and volunteer executive director of Bright Blessings, a non-profit which hosts birthday parties for homeless children throughout the Charlotte region.

For many children dealing with being homeless, celebrating a birthday may not be something they get to experience, Cervantes says. Now, as the number of homeless children and families continues to increase, non-profit organizations across the country are working to change that.

Birthday Wishes, a non-profit based in Massachusetts that was founded in 2002, has hosted more than 8,000 parties and celebrated the birthdays of more than 24,000 homeless children throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Long Island, N.Y., says Lisa Vasiloff, executive director and co-founder.

Birthday Wishes and Bright Blessings are two of many non-profits nationwide with similar missions. Birthday Dreams serves the Puget Sound area in Washington state and has hosted more than 806 birthday parties since it began in 2009, says Nicole Thayer, communications and donor relations manager.

Volunteers of America also has a program, Brightening Birthdays for Homeless Children, which started in 2010 and operates at 11 locations nationwide, says Shelley Goode, the vice president of fundraising and financial development.

Birthday Wishes is fueled by donations, volunteers — more than 500 a month — and corporate sponsors, such as Hasbro and Whole Foods. The organization works with 175 homeless shelters and programs monthly to host a party for birthday children ages 1 through 19. All children in the homeless shelter are invited to attend the party, which includes games, food and goody bags. Vasiloff says the key moment is recognizing each birthday child by name on the cake and presenting them with a few, personalized birthday gifts.

Vasiloff said the organization has grown along with the rise in child and family homelessness. One in 45 children are homeless in the U.S., according to Ellen Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family Homelessness. That means nearly 1.6 million children, about half of which are younger than 6, she says.

And the numbers are growing. Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, says the number of homeless families with young children has increased by 9% from 2010 to 2011.

As shelters fill to capacity, welfare hotels and other homeless living units have opened, Bassuk says. The most common demographic of a homeless family is a female head of family in her late 20s with two children, she said.

To aid homeless children not living in shelters, Birthday Wishes created the Birthday-In-A-Box program, which delivers items to homeless families so they can host a birthday party for their child.

The program's size has tripled in the past two years, Vasiloff says, and now, more than 120 boxes are distributed a month.

"We're trying to reach everybody, but the numbers of children are still growing, and they are actually becoming harder to identify and reach because they're not all in traditional shelter situations," Vasiloff says.

Bright Blessings also created a Bless-A-Baby program in 2010 after seeing a large number of homeless newborns in shelters, Cervantes said. The program has aided more than 500 newborn babies by providing resources to homeless mothers.

"It's probably the most overlooked and underserved population in homelessness," Cervantes says about newborns born into homelessness.

Bright Blessings aims to launch a national network, and it has developed three pilot affiliates in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, and it has more than 300 requests for more, Cervantes says.

"Normal," for homeless children, is not having a birthday party, Donovan says, adding that these non-profit organizations introduce the children to a missing experience.

Nevertheless, the problem of homelessness still exists as the overarching issue for the children.

"A kid may savor that experience and remember it as very special, but their situation is very scary and often long-term," Bassuk says. "A lot of these families are residentially unstable for long periods, and that's very hard on the kids."

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